Materials are everywhere. They are – and always have been – the condition for what humans can create. In recent decades, however, matter – the physical substance of decorative or visual art – has gained renewed prominence. The materials that an object is made of play a different, more prominent role compared to classic 20th-century modernism.

This article will examine some of the ideas implicit in the new emphasis on materials in contemporary practices. We will also be travelling back in time, to 16th-century Europe, to take a look at the prevailing understanding of nature and materials at the time. The connections between materials and object during the premodern period offer important insights in relation to today’s trends and can help shed light on the current departure from modernism that we are a part of.

Materials in today’s fine art, decorative art and cultural studies

The application of matter in contemporary fine and decorative art can take on a wide range of forms and stylistic expressions. Objects may consist of a single material or be constructed as a cultivation of variation with an emphasis on material connectivity or contrasts.

However, even though the objects may have many different appearances, the emphasis on their materiality is a frequent common denominator. This includes a focus on the creative act or process itself – the time and effort that went into the making of artworks and objects. One example of this is Bente Skjøttgaard’s Frieze P7: A decorative frieze with a contemporary ornament.

The interest in materials and their materiality – their sensuous appearance or effect – is not just a factor in artistic practices but also in the discussion of theoretical topics at art schools and art academies and in cultural studies at universities, such as anthropology and art history. The field of Material Culture Studies is generating a growing number of papers and books, and neomaterialism has become an established concept to describe current trends. A common goal of these recent theoretical developments is to place materials centre-stage in the analysis of the objects we create and surround ourselves with.

Taking the artist’s ego out of the equation

This attention to materials is two-sided. The point is not just to emphasize the materiality of objects but also to decentre the human component: the person or persons creating the object. The goal is to take the artist’s ego out of the equation: ‘the artist’s idea + act = artwork’. In relation to fine and decorative art, this presents certain paradoxes, since the object is, by definition, human-made.

Nevertheless, the desire to tone down the artist’s significance or their control over the piece is one of the reasons for the huge wealth of new practices, material innovations and self-imposed restrictions that are currently being tested. Many artists seek to let the materials and their agency – their intrinsic capabilities and behaviour – determine the shape of the object.

These efforts to unleash the power of materials align with other current developments aiming to tone down the artist’s ego, such as working in artist communities, where the individual contributor is more anonymous; taking a site-specific approach that makes the environment an equal part of the object and diminishes the artist’s individual contribution; or engaging in performative practices where the object emerges in a co-creative process with the audience.

Connectivity

From a more general cultural theoretical perspective, this effort to decentre the human subject may be seen as a reaction to the impact that human enterprise is having on the planet. We are beginning to realize that the industrialization of recent centuries in particular is having a pronounced effect on the state of nature, not least with regard to climate, biodiversity, plant diversity and mineral resources.

As biological organisms (right down to the microbiome), we are part of a greater whole, where hard boundaries are not meaningful. It has become untenable to maintain the traditional notion that humans are placed above or in opposition to nature and the implied concept of nature as one large cornucopia created solely for the benefit of humankind. One implication of the growing awareness that the human impact on the environment is obviously also impacting ourselves is that we neither can nor should stand apart from nature.

Thus, the current interest in materials is also about breaking down hierarchies, authorities and ingrained ideas about humankind and our relationship with the rest of the world. One commonality of many works of art is an interest in hybridity pursued through studies of transitions between object and environment, with entanglement, connectivity, mesh, network and intra-action as some of the key concepts.

Both theorists and artists focus on materials as dynamic substances and view our treatment of materials as a process that affects us in return. This marks a departure from the traditional concept of an active subject and a passive object. Materials are not separate from us – they are something that we are closely connected to, in our lifeworld, something that we interact with and are a part of. In this awareness, we recognize the familiar message of the Christian burial ritual: Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust … We are a part of the materials that make up the world.

Natural art and artificial nature in 16th-century Italy

The worldview and concept of nature that have prevailed during the modern era began to take shape in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Around this time, there was growing recognition of the idea that the earth was not the centre of the universe but merely a planet orbiting the sun. This was part of the so-called Scientific Revolution, accompanied by early industrialization and the large-scale exploitation of resources in far-flung parts of the world through colonization. Humans were gradually coming came into their role of as the supposed masters of nature and its forces.

The 16th century was a time of transition between this worldview and an earlier, Aristotelian understanding that perceived the earth as a single giant organism that continuously generates new materials.

This worldview is reflected in the etymology of matter, which comes from the Latin mater, meaning ‘mother’, which is also the root of matrix, meaning ‘womb’. Earth’s caves and other cavities were perceived as a sort of wombs capable of regenerating stone inside them. If a quarry was left alone, it was believed that the rocks would gradually grow back.

Fossils, whose geological genesis and unfathomable age were unknown, were regarded as drawings generated by nature, as if it were a sort of artist. Similarly, the artist’s practice simply involved releasing the potential form or image that lay hidden inside the material. Some artists specialized in painting on tiles of so-called pietra paesina, landscape stones, whose natural patterns resembled mountains, ruins and clouded skies; thus, with just a few brushstrokes, the artist could bring out an actual figuration.

These private princely collections featured the most exquisite and peculiar hybrids of art and nature. Typical examples include clam shells, ivory, tortoiseshell, coral or ostrich eggs mounted on intricate stands of gold, silver and enamel, thus merging human craftsmanship with nature’s shapes. Art was not seen as control over nature but rather as a collaboration with nature and its materials.

A dynamic concept of materials

At this time, the periodic system or the concept of elements with specific physical and chemical properties had not yet been developed. Instead, materials were categorized based on behaviour or appearance, including shine, colour or consistency. Animals and plants were similarly organized according to superficial similarities.

Practitioners of this early precursor of modern chemistry conducted experiments to discover what happened to substances when they were heated, distilled and mixed. The most famous undertaking within this field was the endeavour to turn lead into gold, but the alchemist practice also had the more idealist goal of human transformation or spiritual improvement.

Thus, the main aspiration was not about mysticism and sorcery but about promoting natural processes through purification. Alchemy was used to produce medical remedies, perfume, liqueurs and dyes for visual art, textiles or ceramics, for example. While modern chemistry deals with what materials are, in a chemical sense, alchemy was more concerned with materials’ affordances, behaviour and potential applications.

The view that materials are in a constant state of flux was manifested culturally in a variety of ways. In every sense, this period was preoccupied with movement, disguises, masks and ambiguity in form and expression. The underlying foundation of it all was the figurative potential that lay hidden in nature and its materials. Thus, 16th-century visual and decorative art is a rich source of studies of the potential of materials to form images and of images to appear life-like and animated and to give the illusion of transcending the surface.

Connections over time

Thus, the concept of materials is not absolute or constant in meaning but instead culturally and historically determined. In the 16th century, people had other ideas about the nature of materials than we do today. Similarly, we should acknowledge that what we have been taking for granted could change again.

Modernity, especially as it was manifested from the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century, divided nature, art and technology into distinct, separate domains, while the concept of fine art emerged as distinct from decorative art.

Today, these categories appear to be gradually merging anew and interacting in ways that are not dissimilar to what happened during the 16th century.

A look at premodern ideas about the connections between natural materials and human-made products may help give us a clearer understanding of the developments unfolding in our own time. The ongoing departure from the former (modern) tendency to overlook or dismiss the significance of materials for works of fine or decorative art appear as a visual echo of the premodern era.

Sources

This article is based on Maria Fabricius Hansen’s own studies of the visual culture of 16th-century Italy, including her books Grotesques: Sixteenth-Century Frescos in Rome, Florence, and Northern Italy (2025) and The Art of Transformation: Grotesques in Sixteenth-Century Italy (2018). The books contain additional literature references.

The section on the pre-modern concept of materials and alchemy is based mainly on James Elkins, What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting Using the Language of Alchemy (1999), pp. 9–39.